


The Only Constant

by thedevilchicken



Category: Ravenous (1999)
Genre: Blood, Cannibalism, Codependency, Dark, Fights, Future Fic, M/M, Manipulation, Rough Sex, ToT: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 12:55:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12531892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Boyd and Ives survive. And survive. And survive.





	The Only Constant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fenellaevangela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/gifts).



Ives likes refrigerators. 

Boyd’s acutely aware of this because seven refrigerators have come through the house in the past three years. He’ll come home from work and find the old one’s been shuffled off onto the back of a truck and a shiny new one’s taken its place, stark white from top to toe and overpriced, and when asked - and even when _not_ asked - Ives says it’s a replacement out of necessity, that it’s just easier to dispose of the evidence on a regular basis because it means the two of them will be harder to trace. 

It’s a nice theory, because with the advent of new technology and the rise of the field of forensics it’s difficult to be sure they won’t end up on some desperately sad late night true crime horrorshow one day, and possibly sooner than either of them would like. Still, Boyd knows that’s not it; it’s quite obvious that having one refrigerator and _not_ sending for a new one every few months would be the way normal people would behave and then maybe, just maybe, their neighbors wouldn’t keep looking at them like one or both of them has some kind of sinister, refrigerator-related kiss of death.

More than any other invention of the modern world - more than cars, more than televisions or microwaves or even freezers, though he enjoys those too - Ives likes refrigerators. Their refrigerator is always fully stocked. It’s Ives that takes care of that, then Boyd comes home and does the cooking. 

There’s a new refrigerator there today when he gets home from work, that he finds once he’s locked the front door of their neat little New York brownstone. He leaves his coat and his bag by the door and he meanders through into the kitchen to find himself a snack before dinner, the way he usually does after a long shift, and he finds a refrigerator there that’s so new it’s still empty and still turned off, not even plugged in at the wall, evidently left to settle. Boyd shakes his head at it with a long-suffering sigh, wondering vaguely how much this one cost them though it’s not as though they’re generally so low on funds that Ives can’t splash out on a new household appliance just as often as he pleases; they’ve had time to learn creative accountancy; they’ve had time to build up their accounts, on-shore and off. And it’s such a regular occurrence these days, the arrival of yet another new refrigerator, that in spite of the hunger growling and clawing in his belly he decides to take a shower instead. 

Ives likes refrigerators. Boyd, on the other hand, likes showers. 

Bathing has come a long way over the years, he thinks, from washing with a cloth over a bowl like they did back at Fort Spencer, stripped to the waist and shivering down to the bone, or maybe a nice hot bath if they could locate a tub for thirty miles in any direction and someone could be persuaded, coerced, probably bribed, to heat up enough water to fill it. He remembers how filthy they used to get in the military, the Mexican dust, the Californian mountain dirt, sweat going stale on their skin and on their clothes, the blood and the spit and the shit and the mud that they stopped smelling in the end because they just couldn't get rid of it. He remembers whole years, whole decades, where the application of eau de toilette was somehow considered more essential than bathing was. He remembers scrubbing his skin in the freezing stream that ran behind their house in Colorado. He remembers a sea-sponge in Ives’ hands under their first hot water shower in Chicago, Ives’ fingers on his skin as he washed away the blood.

He likes showers and Ives is acutely aware of this, which is probably why the bathroom door opens. It’s probably why, as Boyd stands there, his eyes closed against the spray, Ives’ hands slip to his hips as he steps up close behind him, as he presses himself to Boyd's back, skin on skin. 

They’ve been doing this for years. 

\---

The first place they stayed more than a month was Dodge City, and twenty years had passed by then already. They already knew that age had ceased to touch them, as it hasn't touched them since. Sometimes, Boyd wishes it would.

“I think we should stay awhile,” Ives said, in the saloon one night, tapping his empty glass against the tabletop. Boyd had already stopped Ives’ hand with his own three times by then, that night, pressing his palm over the back of it to cease the tap-tap-tapping, though frankly they both knew that Ives would start again soon after and they both knew Boyd really didn’t care. He was used to it. It was a routine they’d already had twenty years to perfect. 

“Oh?” Boyd said.

“They need a dentist.”

“Your plan is to correct people’s teeth?” Boyd asked. He might have sounded incredulous if he’d had any incredulity left in him where Ives was concerned, but twenty years learning his habits, learning his voice, learning his character, had been more than enough to sap his stores of it. 

“I’ve always _pulled_ teeth easily enough,” Ives replied, smoothly, and he polished off the rest of his whiskey with a glint in his eye. 

There was a trace of a smile there at Ives’ mouth as he said it. There was a trace of a smile at Boyd’s mouth, too. Ives’ sense of humour has always been an acquired taste, much like many other things have been. And so, in spite of Boyd’s vastly better judgement, they stayed in Dodge City. They didn’t have a tub to wash in, but he made do.

Identities were so much easier to forge back then, Boyd thinks now. These days it takes a lot more skill, specialist skill, computers and contacts and money and time. Back then, Boyd did it all himself; in Dodge they were brothers, John and James Butler, respectable types though it took some time to readjust to society after their time spent away from it. In the beginning, Boyd had thought keeping apart from the world was what was right, some kind of just punishment for what they’d both become or protection for others who might cross their paths. They lived in the wild for years, stole from wagon trains heading west, ate only when the hunger was worst and Ives went along with it, with him, though going along didn’t mean he didn’t complain. Boyd’s not sure if he expected them both to die out there or if he just hoped they would, but he thinks Ives knew they wouldn’t. He doubts Ives would have let them, had it come to it.

Both he and Ives are ultimately educated men from educated families so it wasn’t a stretch when Boyd took up tutoring the local gentlemen’s sons in their rented space there in Dodge City while Ives pulled gentlemen’s teeth upstairs. From time to time, he caught Ives licking the instruments when he was done with a treatment. He knows he shouldn’t have found it as amusing as he did, but sometimes he smiled. Sometimes, Ives smiled back, his teeth bloody.

They’ve had tens of different identities since then. They change their names and they change cities and they move on and away but they're always together, which is the salient point, Boyd thinks, because Ives is never out of his sight for long. Boyd calls himself John each and every time, John Booth, John Bassett, John Berwick; Ives has had so many last names now that neither one of them can remember even half of them but Boyd gives him the Christian names of the apostles out of some vague sense of irony. He was Simon in Salt Lake City, Andrew in Austin, Jude in Jackson. He’s Nathanael now, Nathan Barber, an artisanal butcher and the irony of that is not lost on either of them. He sells speciality meats to upmarket city restaurants while Boyd works long hours at a hospital nearby. He’s a trauma surgeon, he spends a lot of time in the ER up to his wrists in people’s chests and in their guts and Ives thinks it’s hilarious, given his past, given his squeamishness, his cowardice. Boyd doesn’t disagree. He knows who he is. It's always there in the back of his mind.

Beards are in fashion again. Ives wears one that makes him look like he did the day they met and he leans against him under the spray, rests his bearded chin against Boyd’s shoulder. He presses his mouth there, he licks his skin, he bites down and Boyd sighs but, at least this time, Ives doesn’t break the skin. 

“You like the new fridge?” Ives says, his lips moving against Boyd’s shoulder as his body presses to Boyd’s back. He’s never lost his accent though they’ve never left the continent, not in all the time they’ve been together. They’ve lived through the forming of the states, after all, through the civil war, though neither of them showed particular interest in that at the time. It made their uniforms obsolete, though Boyd still has them both. He's not usually nostalgic but there are occasional exceptions. “I’ll stock up in the morning. We wouldn’t want you to go hungry.”

Boyd laughs at that. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to tell if his laughter sounds bitter or amused. 

\---

The first time they had sex, they’d been travelling together for more than fifty years. 

The century had turned by then, nineteenth to twentieth, 1899 gave way to 1900. They were living in Boston, as brothers, John and Bartholomew Barclay, lawyers with their own small practice. Ives had been thinking about eating one of their clients; considering the client, Boyd found almost it difficult to fault him for that sentiment. 

Ives had, however, also been thinking about sex. He'd been going on about it for weeks, maybe months, about how he missed it, how having Boyd always lurking there like a dour, frowning chaperone severely limited his options, and Boyd would have told him to find himself a prostitute and let that be that except they were both so hungry that he wouldn't have trusted himself as far as he could spit, let alone Ives. 

They were meant to be working - they had to make ends meet, after all, and put food on the table - but Ives had left the table and was talking again, soliloquizing again, rhapsodizing on the virtues of sexual congress, and suddenly, Boyd could not take another word of it. He stood, abruptly, with a loud scrape of his chair, but that didn't seem to deter Ives one iota. So, he pushed him. Ives paused; he raised his brows. Boyd pushed him again, and Ives seemed to think it was a game because he smiled at him, teasing, a little more than a smirk but not by much.

"Do you want to fight?" Ives said, and that smile on his face made Boyd's blood boil. 

"I want you to be quiet," he replied. He clenched his fists. Ives' smile widened. That did not please Boyd at all. 

"We all want something," Ives said, and he turned his back and made Boyd scowl. He moved. He moved quickly, and he pushed Ives up face-first against the nearby wall by their perfectly legitimate framed qualifications, because Boyd had insisted they needed to train and not just provide good fake credentials. Ives threw back his head and it connected with Boyd's nose; he heard the cartilage crunch and felt blood begin to pour but he was so irate that he remained completely undeterred. Ives struggled, and he's always been strong and lithe and wiley, but Boyd held him there with one forearm barred across his shoulder blades. He might not be _much_ the taller of the two, but it gives him a certain mechanical advantage that he didn't hesitate to put to use just then, but he knew Ives wasn't putting his back into it. Ives was all but letting him do it; perhaps the fact Ives always preferred to eat men meant something, after all. All that did was ratchet Boyd's anger up a notch.

He unsnapped Ives' absurd fashionable suspenders one-handed and pushed his slacks down over his hips. He unbuckled his own belt and bared himself to mid-thigh, too. Then he leaned against him, held him with his weight, rubbed the length of his cock to the cleft of Ives' backside, and Ives cursed, not particularly quietly. When Boyd insinuated one hand between Ives' crotch and the wall, Ives pressed himself against it, his cock filling rapidly. When Boyd ran his fingers through the blood still streaming from his nose and shoved the first two into Ives' mouth, he groaned and sucked on them instead of biting down. And Boyd, disgusted, irritated, hopelessly turned on, rocked his hips against him and let his nose bleed into the shoulder of Ives' shirt. 

Ives came against the wall not even five whole minutes later. Boyd came over the small of Ives' back. All Boyd could think was at least his nose had stopped bleeding. 

There was blood all over Boyd's face and his neck and soaked into the collar of his shirt. There was blood all over Ives' shoulder and his lips and a handprint smudged against the wall. There was blood on the floor and Boyd almost slipped in it as Ives turned round in front of him but Ives took two handfuls of Boyd's shirt and held him steady. He licked Boyd's neck. When Ives kissed him, hard, his mouth was sweet and dark with iron.

"Next time, let's go to bed," Ives said, pleasantly. Boyd grimaced. Ives tucked himself in and walked away.

Boyd cleaned the wall with a scrubbing brush and a bucket of warm water, still in his ruined clothes, and later on, that night, he went to Ives' bedroom. Ives was already stretched out, naked, smiling. He spread his legs. Boyd knelt between them.

Ives hasn't complained about sex since.

\---

They had a butcher’s shop in New Orleans in the 50s, back when they were the Bright Brothers, John and Peter. They had a butcher’s shop in Seattle in the 90s - the 1990s, Ives always reminds him, because in 1890 they were in Forth Worth or in Dallas, somewhere in Texas at least. Ives has held onto the same set of knives since 1892. Boyd’s worn old medical bag was made in 1903. Boyd wonders if time matters anymore. It's been so long since this began.

In the beginning, after what happened, Boyd didn’t expect to survive. 

What he expected was death. He might even have welcomed it, all things considered, though he’d distinguished himself in his military career mostly by running from it. But he lived - they both did - and when he woke, he was shackled in a shack. His clothes were stiff with half-frozen blood. He was shivering.

“Why did you want me dead, Boyd?” Ives asked. 

“I _still_ want you dead,” Boyd replied. 

“Apparently. But why is that, do you think?”

Boyd sighed. “How many people have you eaten?” he asked. 

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

Boyd gave him a pained look, as his reply and also because frankly he was still in pain. “Then I can’t explain it to you,” he said, tersely. He honestly didn’t think he could. 

Ives returned in the morning. 

“Manifest destiny,” Ives said. “You object to the notion, Captain Boyd.”

Boyd rattled his chains, quite literally. “I object to _your_ notion,” he said. “I object to making others like you.”

“Like _us_ ,” Ives corrected with a subsequent cluck of his tongue. “Like _us_ , Boyd. And if that’s your only complaint in the matter then you could just have said so.”

Boyd frowned, narrowed his eyes with something on the periphery of suspicion. “It’s not my _only_ complaint,” he said.

“But it’s the major one, yes?”

Boyd scowled. Ives’ smile brightened. When Ives left, he left him some stew. 

“What if it was just the two of us?” Ives said the next day, crouching there in front of him. “What if I concede the point and we go on alone?”

“By killing people and eating them, you mean.”

Ives shrugged his shoulders. He spread his arms expansively. “I don’t see what else there is for it,” he said. 

“You could kill me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want you dead.”

“Then what _do_ you want from me?”

Ives handed him a bowl of stew. Boyd had ejected the last one through the open door, but he had to hand it to Ives: he was persistent. 

“Companionship,” Ives said, and he left the shack yet again. Boyd eyed the bowl there in his hands; he felt his stomach turn, and then he threw the bowl as hard as his chained hands allowed. 

Ives brought him no more stew. He brought no more food at all but he came each day, in the morning, accurate to the second like a well-wound pocket watch. And, six days later, Boyd agreed. He’d had plenty of time to think. He remembers how Ives smiled as he slit the general’s throat, the look on his face as he watched Boyd kill the general’s aide. They burned the bodies, made it look like a raid but what they did was make sure they were alone again, the only two left. 

They left together, with everything they could carry. 

Refrigerators works so much better than snow to keep meat fresh.

\---

Ives' hand wanders. His fingers wrap around Boyd's cock and squeeze at the head of it, hard enough that Boyd hisses in a breath. Ives knows him. They know each other. 

Boyd trained to be a doctor fifty years ago, so Ives did, too, but Boyd's the one that's good at it. They both know human anatomy just as well, but Boyd puts it back together while Ives takes it apart, and Ives thinks he does it because it assuages his guilt. It doesn't, but Boyd lets him think that. The truth is, he gave up on guilt long ago. He wonders if Ives feels more of it these days.

Ives' fingers rub between Boyd's cheeks, two pads against his hole. He wouldn't mind if Ives pushed them both inside him, but he doesn't. He wouldn't mind if Ives put his cock in him instead, like he's done before so very many times, the way Boyd likes him to, but he doesn't. He leans up to Boyd's ear instead, and murmurs, "Come to bed." 

They go back to the cave sometimes. Even with the new towns and new roads, cars and trucks and motorcycles, it takes at least a day to get there, down tracks, through mountains, away from civilization. It feels like going back in time along the way, except they're carrying backpacks covered in logos and they don't get half as many blisters from their newfangled boots. Sometimes the cave looks like it's been untouched since they were last there. Sometimes a lost hiker or two has made a fire by the entrance. No one goes much deeper in but them.

They built a cabin out there once, in the mountains, and it took them weeks though weeks don't seem to matter, so they wouldn't crouch there gnawing bones in the stench of the bowels of the cave. Sometimes they went weeks without speaking to each other in there, feeling their way along the walls in the dark when the fire went out. Sometimes all they did was talk. They haven't been back in years.

They dry off quickly, watching each other under the stark bathroom light. Boyd knows Ives' body, every inch of it from head to toe, inside and out, not just through the sex but by other means; he's tried to kill him so many times over the years, shot him, stabbed him, wrapped his hands around his throat and squeezed, and then fixed him after. He knows Ives' heart looks just like any other does because Ives let him crack his chest to see. Ives trusts him more than he trusts himself. They go to bed. 

These days, they share a bed more often than they don't. At last year's Christmas party, Boyd introduced Ives to his colleagues as his partner and they kissed under the mistletoe and Ives was just as charming as he always is. He told them stories about how Boyd used to faint at the sight of blood and everyone laughed, but Boyd's smile was different. He's changed over the years, he thinks, inevitably, but so has Ives.

Ives goes down on his back, his long hair fanned out against the pillows, and Boyd follows him. He kisses him hungrily, _hungrily_ , and Ives' nails rake his back and Boyd pushes up again, he kneels, he reaches for the lubricant that's in the drawer by the bed. He slicks himself thickly, quickly, and Ives watches with a grin on his face, gleeful, his cock standing huge and flushed and hard. When Boyd pushes into him in one deep, practised thrust, hard enough it must hurt but they both know Ives has had so much worse, Ives groans out loud and wraps his legs around Boyd's waist. Boyd thinks their neighbors must hate them, and not just because of the delivery trucks that block the street with Ives' new appliances. Ives is never quiet. 

And afterwards, they go back to the shower and Ives rambles with his mouth pressed to the crook of Boyd's neck while Boyd's fingers tease his hole. He fucks him with them till he's hard again and then he goes down on his knees and he sucks him, but even that doesn't shut Ives up. Boyd's not surprised. Ives is _never_ quiet.

They've been together for years now, through wars and revolutions and more modern inventions than they can count, showers and refrigerators, science not even dreamed of at the time they were both born. Ives has restrung his rosary more times than Boyd can count; Ives wants to believe in God but Boyd knows all he really believes in is himself. They've changed their names more times than he can count, either. 

As Ives is towelling his hair, Boyd goes to his desk across the bedroom. He opens the drawer and pulls out what he knows is waiting there; he puts it all on the desktop and leans against the edge, just far enough away that if his long hair drips, it won't drip on the papers. They both look a lot like they did when they met, he thinks, but they're not the same because they've changed each other. They've done it mouthful by mouthful, sip by sip. 

Every time Boyd cooks, every time he's cooked for years, his blood or his flesh is in the food they eat; he thinks Ives has eaten more of him over the years than he has anyone else. It's still in him, but Boyd's not as cowardly now as he used to be. Ives, on the other hand, is more, and Boyd wonders if he's noticed. Boyd wonders if he can win this time, now that they're both different. He wonders if he even wants to. Sometimes, he wonders if Ives had the same idea he did; maybe they're both as much each other as they are themselves.

Ives has never told him his first name and while it's probably a matter of public record, Boyd has never looked it up. When Ives opens the passport Boyd's had made, it calls him _Thomas Ives_ , and he's _John Boyd_. 

"Boyd," Ives says, trying out the name for the first time in over a century. He smiles. He seems to like the way it feels and sounds. 

"Ives," Boyd replies. "I think it's time for us to leave." Boyd's already handed in his notice. He looks _really_ good for someone who's in his fifties now, at least on paper. It's time. Ives nods. He understands.

Ives threads his fingers into Boyd's wet hair. He nuzzles his jaw. "We should eat something," he says. Boyd doesn't disagree.

Ives will sell the business and they'll move on, or move back, maybe back to California, maybe back to where it all began. If he has to, Boyd can live without a shower.

The new refrigerator won't get much use after all.


End file.
